Freckles
by Paper Lilly Webs
Summary: "His freckles weren't the first thing I noticed about him, but they sure as hell kept me looking." Short SolKat oneshot. Cover Picture is not exactly how I imagine him, but it's the closest I could get. T for language. I really wish Fluff could be a genre. Lazy summary is lazy. Beginning piece in the series "Of Freckles and Silver".


**A/B**: OOC Warning: KK is a little OOC, reasons for such are in the bottom Author's Note.

* * *

_Sollux_

Books are my best friends, and I full-heartedly accept that fact. Why would I want to hang around douchebags when I could be in Camelot with King Arthur, or the Underworld with Odysseus, or Denmark with Hamlet? Nah, real people have never interested me, and I'm quite content with my copy of Shakespeare's plays, thank you very much.

An autumn breeze plays with my black hair, the scent of waning summer filling the air around me. Red and gold leaves dance across the sidewalk my feet rest on, and tease the brown grass on either side of the bench I'm on. A group of people my age are playing basketball in the court in front of me, their shouting certainly very distracting.

Some kid makes a basket, eliciting a chorus of cheers, and makes me raise my eyes from my book. I'm not all happy to be interrupted whilst reading Merchant of Venice, and debate moving benches to another, quieter, section of the park.

Then I see him, the boy bending easily around his companions. He has a mass of gold-blonde hair, is wearing a blue tank top and cargo shorts, and is seemingly gliding over the court. He has the ball, twisting in and out if the hands of the opposing team, and his movements are almost... graceful. He ducks under the arm of another blonde kid with dark shades, then leaps off his toes and makes the shot.

Something tells me he never misses.

He catches his own rebound and flies back down the court before coming back around to take another shot.

During this jump, sunlight peeking out of the thin cloud-layer catches his bare shoulders and nose, revealing a chaotic mess of freckles. Good lord, they're everywhere. He's undeniably pale, so I don't think he gets much sun, and therefore he's one of those people who just has a natural explosion of the spots. I've never seen someone with so many on their shoulders though, and this interests me greatly.

I find myself watching the boy, my book laying forgotten in my lap. He moves like a fierce lightning, but as soft as a whisper he passes and catches the ball, his team gladly letting him shoot. His team is like a wall, keeping the opposers from getting anywhere near the centerline and they move like a well-oiled machine. It makes me wonder how much time these kids spend playing basketball. The blonde boy scores another basket, another loud cheer erupting from his team.

I only realize I'm staring when they start a new game, and, as they line up again, the blond boy's eyes fall on me. I jolt and quickly look away, prying to god he hasn't seen me.

Instead of looking up again when the new game starts, I reset myself to reading, ignoring the little flippy jig my stomach is doing. I wasn't expecting his eyes to be platinum gray, almost silver. Is it even possible to have eyes like that? Surely they were contacts...

"Look out!" Not given time to react, I feel a hard object collide with my head full-force, knocking me completely off the bench and onto the slightly-damp sidewalk.

"Holy fuck, are you alright?!" Through blurred vision, I see the freckled boy jump over the fence and quickly jog over to me. I slowly sit up, rubbing the spot on my head where the basketball had hit me. "Dude, you okay?" He offers down his hand to me, and I hesitate before taking it. His skin is calloused and rough, but not wholly unpleasant.

"I-I'm fine." I assure him, though I'd probably have a bruise later.

The boy picks up my fallen book and hands it to me, smiling apologetically. Up close, he has even _more_ freckles, and they accent his pale skin nicely.

"Dude, sorry about that. Equius doesn't know his own strength." He jerks his perfectly shaped chin to a tall boy with a pony-tail and broken shades.

"It'th alright. I gueth I'm kind of in the splath zone." He laughs at that, a simple, hearty laugh that causes my stomach to flip again.

"That you are!"

"Karkat, get the ball already!" One of his friends call to him, and grins before waving over his shoulder. The he turns back to me.

"You wanna join the game? We have room for one more player."

"Heh, no thankth. I don't do thporth." He shrugs good-naturedly.

"You're choice. Oh, I'm Karkat, by the way." He holds out his hand again, and I shake it a little timidly.

"Thollux." Fuck, talk about butchering your own name.

"Nice to meet you, Sollux. Well, I should go back." He picks up the ball that landed a few feet away from us, and throws me another grin before rejoining his friends, leaving me feeling bubbly, but so very lonely.

* * *

_Karkat_

"Vantas, you can't flirt with every guy that throws you a glance. You'd never have time for flirting _us_." Is Dave's greeting as I jump back over the fence into the basketball court.

Instead of responding seriously, I chuck the ball at his face, narrowly missing his "oh-so-precious" shades.

"We can't _all_ be as cool as you, Dave. Not every word I speak to a guy is an attempt to flirt. And, really, who besides Egderp would want to flirt with _you_?" We resume our game, laughter accompanying my remark.

Three games later, we're all taking a break, lounging around different places on the court. I sit next to Gamzee, my self-proclaimed best friend, both of us leaning against the cross-wire fence nearest the park bench where Sollux had previously been. I saw him leave about an hour ago, taking his Shakespeare book with him.

I'd never let anyone know it, but I also had a copy, and felt a wave of respect for the guy for reading it in public.

"Bro, you liked him." I glance over at Gamzee, who is watching me with his lopsided, all-knowing grin.

"What?"

"The dude from before. You were totally into him." There's seriously no way to hide things from Gamzee. He sees right through any lie you try to feed him, even Rose's utterly stoic ones.

I snerk, leaning my head back to watch the gray clouds moving overhead.

"And if I was?" He laughs his weird, honk-like laugh, ruffling my mop of straw-blonde hair.

"And nothin'. I'm happy for ya, bro." Yeah, happy for me why? I'd barely spoken to the kid; and I'm almost positive he isn't gay. "Bro, he was totally gay." Gamzee says, as if reading my mind.

"Yeah, how'd you figure?"

"Bro, he was watching you play. You should have seen the look on his face-" I snort.

"Gamzee, you're imagining things." He's probably about to make some snarky remark, but is interrupted by the entrance of his boyfriend, Tavros.

Said boy wheels over to us, his timid grin on display as Gamzee gets happily to his feet to greet him half-way. I roll my eyes and look away from the sloppy makeouts about to occur, letting my mind wander.

He _had_ been watching. I'd felt someone watching me the entire game, and when I looked over at him, he was blushing like fuck. Unless he'd been watching someone like Dave, who's just as good at basketball as me.

But Sollux had been blushing when I was talking to him too. Was it from his tumble to the ground, or was it like mine, realizing that he was cute as fuck? He'd had heterochromatic eyes, hidden behind weird multi-color glasses. One was azure blue, the other a kind of burgundy red. I've never seen such a combination of colors, but it's far from unattractive. On the contrary, it makes him strangely alluring.

Well, fuck. One encounter is enough to completely fuck up my thought processes and make me regret being gay. You'd think after six years of being gay, I'd have have gotten used to cute guys, but something about Sollux was... different?

Fuck. Fuck his stupidly cute face, fuck his stupidly endearing smile, and fuck myself for being as transparent as fuck. Fuck it all to hell, and take me along with it, because this is all fucking stupid, and I really wish Kanaya would stop smiling at me like she fucking knows everything.

Fucking stupid gay friends.

* * *

_Sollux_

When I made my way back to the park the next day, I was not expecting to see Karkat again.

Coming to the park is a normal activity for me, and I had planned on finding a different bench further away from the basketball court, but my path is blocked by the horde of people I guess Karkat calls his friends. They're walking in the opposite direction, so I lightly step off the path to avoid walking into them, and spy Karkat at the front of the group, laughing between a tall boy with curly black hair and a girl with freaky red sunglasses.

I avoid eye contact with any of them, shoving my hands and my book into the pockets of my jacket; it's gotten significantly colder since yesterday, and even Karkat's group of friends are wearing gloves and hats. I keep walking, towards a bench a little ways away from yesterday's, and would have made it there too, if it is not for the shout from behind me.

I turn, to be greeted to the glorious sight of Karkat in skinny jeans and a tight sweater. It's a big jump from his tanktop last time, but he has the same freckly grin and shining silver eyes as then too.

"Hey, Sollux." He comes to a halt in front of me, and I notice his friends pausing to watch us before moving on, as if they had expected their blonde friend to abandon them.

"Um, hello." Is all I can manage, though you'd think with all the reading I've done, I'd have a much wider vocabulary.

"I didn't expect you to come here again; most people just come once." I shrug, fighting back the blush I know is starting to creep up from my neck to my cheeks.

"I like thith park. It'th quiet." Quiet when there aren't twenty people playing basketball ten feet in front of you.

I turn my book over in my hands nervously, awaiting his response.

"Which one?" I look up at that, furrowing my eyebrows.

"Which one what?" He smiles again, laughing.

"Which play are you reading? I saw you had the collection yesterday." Oh god, he knows it was Shakespeare.

"Um, yethterday, I wath reading the Merchant of Venithe."

"I haven't read that one. Is it good?" I honestly can't tell if he's teasing me or not, so I shrug again. "Oh, not your favorite. What _is_ your favorite then? I'm rather partial to Love Labors Lost, but that's just me." Well, of he knows _that_ one, I think it's safe to assume he knows the rest.

"Hamlet ith my favorite." I eventually respond, concentrating on not letting my eyes stray from the trees behind him.

Based on this fluttery squirming my stomach is feeling, looking him in the face would probably be the death of me. No matter how many guys I've been interested in since I realized I was gay, holding a conversation with them is still uncomfortable as fuck.

Or, you know, I'm just exceedingly antisocial.

"Mm, I've never been one for the tragedies."

"Um, thouldn't you be getting back to your friendth?" I nod towards their retreating forms. I'm eager to end the conversation just as much as I want to continue it.

Karkat follows my gaze, then shrugs.

"Everyone's just heading home. It rained last night so the court it full of puddles." Is he actually _trying_ to keep this conversation going? It's still pretty fucking weird that he wants to hold a conversation with _me_. Usually by this point, I've made some obscure reference, put people off with my lisp, or just bored them to death.

This is the longest I've spoken to someone that isn't family.

"Then thouldn't you be getting home as well?" He laughs again , and I'm entranced by the bouncing of his freckles while he does.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to get rid of me, Sollux!" I clear my throat awkwardly, slowly formulating a response.

"Um, well, I'm not really uthed to talking to people..." Jesus Christ, is there a reason I just told him that?

"Oh. Sorry." He smiles an apologetic grin. "But you won't learn unless you try, right?"

"I gueth." Oh god, he's laughing again, and that just makes me want to smile. Okay, you know what, despite my love of Shakespeare, love at first sight does _not_ exist, so why the hell do I feel like I've known this kid my entire life?

"Okay, this is probably going to sound really weird, since I don't know fuck about you, but do you want to go out?"

. . . .

Pardon me while my brain repieces itself after its explosion two seconds ago.

A kid, whom I only met yesterday thanks to a wayward-flying basketball, who has more freckles than I could ever hope to count, who has a smile that I swear is the most gorgeous thing on the planet, who has eyes that are almost silver, and who has a laugh that puts sunshine to shame, is asking me out. And I'm standing here like an idiot while he's waiting for an answer.

His grin doesn't falter, and sunlight catches his cheeks again, lighting up his freckly complexion as if to tell me _just say yes._

"Yeah, thure."

* * *

**A/N**: Do do do, writer's block is a bitch. I'm having a lot of trouble writing the next chapters for Charcoal and Scars, and Runners, and I'd been toying with this idea for a while, so to get out of my slump, I made myself write this.

Okay, before anyone says it: KK is OOC. I have a reason for this: The problem with a lot of writers making humanizations of the trolls is that they use JUST what Hussie gave them to work with, meaning KK is always an angry ball of swearing and cursing. What writers don't do is give a reason _why_. In the cannon story, half of its because of his blood color, and the other half is speculated to be because of the Sufferer, but in human AU's, you don't have either of those, meaning KK is just angry for the fuck of it. In Charcoal and Scars, I combated this with tortured back-story and traumatic experiences, but a lot of people leave something like that out, and I find it completely unrealistic for someone to be angry for the fuck of it all.  
I'm also a strong believer in the fact that KK would be a very happy child if he didn't have a bad past, blood color, or emotional leavings of his ancestor. If he had a good childhood, had good friends, sgrub didn't exist, and blood castes didn't exist, I think KK would be able to be a very enjoyable person to be around. That's why he's laughing and smiling all the time in this, because KK shouldn't always be forced to have a bad life, because KK doesn't deserve it. Just my opinion.

Yes, KK is also blonde. When humanized, a lot of people have Sollux as dirty blonde or light brunette, while KK has either dark brown hair, red or black (I've even seen someone draw him with silver hair; he looked like Soul Eater), but I found this one picture on Devientart with KK with blonde hair. I really liked this idea, and, after changing the shade so as not to be confused with Dave, just gave Sollux black hair, because I am a strong believer in black-haired Sollux.

On the subject of freckles: I. Love. FRECKLES. You have freckles, you have my immediate respect. If I'm ever going to date anyone, they have to have a fuckton of freckles, and that's that.  
Okay, as to why I gave them to KK? I have a headcannon. It hasn't been my headcannon for long. A couple weeks ago, I saw this one girl at the movie theater with freckles freaking EVERYWHERE, including her shoulders, and I really liked the idea. Of course, being me, I immediately though of how awesome KK would look with those kind of freckles, and this storyline was born.

Also, as to why basketball, I just needed Sollux to get hit in the head with something, and I don't like football, tennis=eh with the storyline, soccer would have been too complicated, and so forth. Also: KK looks dead gorgeous in a tanktop. You will never tell me otherwise.

The reason for Shakespeare: I love Shakespeare, I'm not even going to lie. Hamlet is my favorite play, Merchant of Venice a close second, and Love Labors Lost is up there in my favorites as well. If Sollux wasn't a computer nerd, I think he'd be a book nerd, and Shakespeare would be high on his list of favorite authors. I had KK like Love Labors Lost, because its a fucking romance, and I know its somewhat of a tragedy, but not so much as Hamlet, thus the reason for that bit in the conversation.

I think I covered everything. Thank you for reading this, and I hope I explained all my headcannons enough to make sense in the story!

Caio for now!

~Webs


End file.
